Frankfurt Book Fair 2024
Defying the reports of losses

Less is not more here: a profound structural change in the publishing sector is becoming apparent ahead of the 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair. Some outstanding new publications also deal with the current crises in society.

For many years, it has been standard in the German book industry to lament the decline of one's own guild. But the mood always brightened up at the Book Fair at the latest, when the decisions of the literary prize juries were discussed, the works of the next programme were praised in the halls and the ultimately gratifying work in the book industry was celebrated at the parties and receptions. There was and still is a great longing for the immediate live experience, which reinforces an overall positive trend: the audience attends the readings, panel discussions and signing sessions with growing enthusiasm, and not only during the fair.

A matter of perspective

The answer to the question of how the literary scene is doing depends on your perspective anyway. Those who spend most of their time online have the impression that the virtual world of books has received a creative boost as a result of the coronavirus shock. Younger target groups in particular are being won over to reading via channels such as #booktok. This impresses even hardened cultural pessimists, who are often unable to relate to the works that are celebrated in digital communities and come from the growing genre areas from new adult to mystery. However, whether the different spheres of book production will one day come together or whether (feuilletonistic) suspicion will continue to prevail only plays a subordinate role in the overall development of the industry. In the meantime, the structural change is so obvious that it is not even suitable for gossip: Almost all areas of the book industry are currently downsizing and cutting back, so that – presumably out of sheer shock – the swansongs to their own profession are also becoming quieter.

Saving money at any price?

In the run-up to the Frankfurt Book Fair, a cutback plan caused outrage: the State Ministry of Culture, headed by Claudia Roth, wants to cut funding for the German Translators' Fund by around 30 per cent. These massive cuts will particularly affect smaller publishers who rely on the grants. Around 14 per cent of new publications each year are translations, a quarter in fiction and over 80 per cent in comics. The fees for translators are already low. However, it is uncertain whether the associations' protests against these cuts will help, especially as further cuts from state budgets are planned. The writers' association PEN Germany is currently fighting against a reduction in funding for persecuted writers as part of the renowned “Writers in Exile” programme.

Books seem to be increasingly losing importance not only on the political agenda, but also in media organisations. Newspapers have been reducing their review sections for years; classic literary criticism is only available in a few print editions. In public broadcasting, formats in which books are presented are regularly disappearing. It is questionable whether new broadcasting concepts, which are mostly distributed via digital channels, will reach the intended audience.

As always, the sales figures published by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association shortly before the fair are revealing: Although there was a slight increase in sales compared to the previous year (due to higher prices), the number of people buying books in Germany is once again falling and has been doing so continuously for many years. The general process of shrinkage seems unstoppable. The stands in the exhibition halls are getting smaller and, behind closed doors, publishing house managers are wondering whether they should continue to take part in the costly trade fair programme.

Against the low mood

But what's the point of moping? Fortunately, there are weighty voices against the bad mood. As existentially threatening as the profound change in the book market is for many, the ‘lamentation of the loss of importance of the book, of the unimportance of literature and its business’, wrote Klett-Cotta publisher Tom Kraushaar in a much-discussed essay in the Frankfurter Allgemeine, ‘not only lacks a sufficiently rational basis, but is also harmful’. Kraushaar complained the ‘self-destruction’ of a profession and its counterproductive ‘whinging’: ‘Anyone who sends the signal to the world that their own industry is a sinking ship’ should not be surprised if young people can no longer imagine doing anything with books (as it used to be called).

For other industry experts, Kraushaar's optimism misses the economic reality. Literary agent Matthias Landwehr responded by outlining the balance of power in the book market: ‘Small, owner-managed literary publishers are no longer even invited by the central buyers at Thalia or Hugendubel to present their books, let alone bring them into the product ranges. ... What can all the passionate book makers ... do to counter the voracious market power of these retail groups?’

It's certainly not easy to get past the doom and gloom, but the reports of loss should not cloud our view of the relevant new releases published in the current time of crisis. It is no coincidence that the outstanding works of the book autumn deal with the increasingly violent conflicts in society on the one hand and the effects of the crises on the microcosm of each individual on the other. It is also noticeable that a large number of new books will be relevant beyond the current season.

Outstanding

With Vierundsiebzig, Ronya Othmann has produced a fundamental work of documentary storytelling that tells of the genocide of the Yazidis, perpetrated by IS terrorists in 2014. At the beginning of the book, it says: ‘Speechlessness structures the written text, determines its grammar, its form, its words.’ With this work, the writer, who was born in Munich in 1993, has indeed set standards in literary writing about an abysmally evil crime – because Othmann's speechlessness does not imply that she stops thinking about language. With this not only politically, but also aesthetically important memorial novel, Ronya Othmann has written herself into German literary history – regardless of whether or not the work wins the German Book Prize. 

Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker, whose new novel Brennende Felder has been nominated for the Austrian Book Prize, writes literature from a different perspective. It is the conclusion of a trilogy that deals with profound experiences of loss in a rural environment. Climate change, the erosion of family and village structures, but also the harshness of everyday agricultural life are described in Kaiser-Mühlecker's books in vivid, surprising and stylistically convincing detail. This makes the author, who runs his ancestral farm while writing, one of the most important representatives of contemporary Austrian literature.

The Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair is Italy. Beyond the political debate on how and with which authors the country will present itself, numerous works published for Italy's appearance as Guest of Honour can be discovered. Historical books that have now been republished are impressive – such as Das Haus in der Gasse by author Maria Messina, born in Palermo in 1887, who writes about life in the Sicilian province. The melancholy novel about a young woman who is married off to an authoritarian landlord is so linguistically flawless that every line gives you the feeling of reading timeless world literature.

The Frankfurt Book Fair has always been an event at which literary and political connections to the past become visible. Anyone interested in a German-Jewish family novel, for example, which tells of present-day trials and tribulations in the mirror of past crimes, can pick up Dana von Suffrin's novel Noch mal von vorne: The author writes in a blackly humorous and touching way about the confusion of a lost generation of parents, but also about the centrifugal forces that still affect the adult children across the generations.

At the book fair, Dana von Suffrin is also presenting the anthology Wir schon wieder with Jewish stories and reflections on the current situation in the Middle East, but above all the rampant anti-Semitism since the Hamas massacre in Israel on 7 October 2023. The book contains moving texts that report on the unsettling hatred of Jews in Germany, calls for boycotts and a hands-on activism that loudly celebrates terror. This loss of communicative reason must be countered with arguments and good literature.

Sector with significance

So we can only hope that the Frankfurt Book Fair, which has had to endure many discussions in the past, will remain a place of peaceful dialogue this time too. That would be no mean feat, but in confrontational times it would be proof of the thesis that the book industry makes an invaluable contribution to social cohesion.